


Grates in the Floor

by helena_s_renn



Category: Def Leppard, Music RPF
Genre: First Time, Hysteria tour, Iconic stage clothes, M/M, Mentions of previous dub-con, Under the stage, Voyeurism, standing up sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:34:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23042572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: Joe never got to participate in the stuff that went on under the Hysteria "In the Round" stage.
Relationships: Joe Elliott/Rick Savage
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The characters portrayed should not be confused with the RL people whose physical appearances these are the idealised versions of. The real Def Leppard, have nothing to do with this fictional nonsense. My fics are all written from a place of deepest respect and admiration.
> 
> *Phil's bio said none of the rumours surrounding this bit of infamy are true. Tour staff and photographers say otherwise.  
> *That said, this story is fiction and makes no claim to being anything BUT.  
> *Many thx for those who helped in the development of fic.  
> *Warning for blips of het sex.  
> *I'm not going to get into the semantics of the sort of behaviour being glorified. That is my choice.  
> *Cross-Posted from RockFic.

-1988

Joe peered down between the toes of his trainers. Every show, he was obligated to walk the whole circumference of the stage and face all directions during the interlude, his job to address the entire arena but he always stopped there the longest, over the grates. 

Actually there were four of the heavy-duty, industrial-grade metal grids, the original intent to provide ventilation and a degree of illumination for their crew. Each show was different as to heaviest-trafficked area under-stage. Joe had the feeling that once down there, all time and direction was lost in the press of sweaty, over-excited bodies. 

He couldn't resist each pause, each look. It nearly killed him to have to watch and not participate - not because of the women but because of the gravitational pull that was Sav. He and Phil and Steve could hear Joe's footsteps taking their circular path. Those three smug bastards often looked up at him as he passed overhead. The muted laughter and gasps and moans weren't usually Sav's; Joe would see straighter hair in lighter shades of blond close together, hard at work. 

Rumours made their way up to the surface about how many chicks their Terror Twins had talked into letting them enter into certain back passages. Different nights, different cities, different women, same M.O. The tally reached triple digits - wildly inflated, he was sure.

It seemed that wasn't Sav's thing, racking up numbers. Many nights, he would keep out of the main fray, have a smoke or a drink, and only occasionally let some girl kneel on the floor in front of him, or, even more rarely, bend one over facing away from him to be taken from behind.

When he did, whatever he did, Joe wanted to be her. Every night, Sav would glance up at Joe as he made his rounds. The lights far overhead threw criss-cross shadows onto Sav's forehead and upturned cheekbones, made his eyes glitter like stars in a moonless night sky. If he was occupied, the look would last a lot longer - till he finished or till Joe moved on. 

He would keep walking then, above their heads, going through his repertoire with the crowd to quell the rising wood that was the only possible response to seeing - or mostly imagining - the details below. Slick red lips opened wide, or a pair of arse cheeks and the hard flushed stalk going in below, coming out slick and delving in again. It was the impression more than the picture, the darkness in the underbelly lit only by intermittent flickering cigarette lighters and glowing red emergency lights, like some shallow, perfumed hell.

Above, Joe fought for his immortal soul, and to not give in to the inevitable manifestation of wanting a man. That man. Granted, Sav wasn't quite as well-used as the Olympic-grade slut material surrounding him down there but he had his moments. 

He was having one now. The eyes looking up at Joe, fixed on him, weren't any degree of stationary. They were moving in a distinct rhythm, one Joe hadn't actually seen close-at-hand yet he knew it better than any but his own having overheard it on the bus in the bunk head-to-head with his. A mess of streaked curly hair bounced, too, and in the murky depths, the suggestion of hips in full coital swing. Sav fucked to the same rhythm as he wanked. 

Usually Joe couldn't hear individual words from the pit. A lull in the crowd noise as thirty thousand quieted to hear him allowed a moment of clarity and Sav's growly fuck-voice: "... that's it girl, taking it so good. Come for me!" So Sav did care if this nameless, faceless chick got her cookies, too, even if he was looking up at Joe's feet, his legs, his bulge and his face while he took her over.


	2. Chapter 2

Another night blended into the next and the next, week in, week out, around the world. Every show racked up one more short-lived saturnalian romp, but not for Joe. 

And not for Sav. Although he still disappeared below, still looked up through the metal fence, he had taken to holding up the underworld's walls in the sense of not partaking in certain ritual acts of carnality. When Joe walked his beat now, just waiting to introduce Rick's drum solo so he could have two minutes alone with his hand and a towel, the frontman squinted down through grate after grate, making himself dizzy, but time had passed in intervals he could never follow before he laid eyes on a repeat of the sights and sounds that had been burned into his brain. 

How long could this go on, this waiting? The tour seemed endless, but the day would come that would be its last. A sense of time passing faster and faster loomed... Till he stopped upon the latticework of man-made, stylised, curved bars, immobilised once more by a specific set of agitation and rhythm. 

The understage party was going strong, cigarette smoke drifted up along with the scent of cheap perfume, weed, pussy. Why couldn't Joe see him? Where were those eyes? Something was wrong with the lights in the overhead rigging. Joe could hear Steve's giggling and Phil choked out, clear as day, "Sav, you idjit, that's not a bird!" 

Mid-sentence, Joe's amplified voice stopped talking. Thousands of faces near and far already staring at him from all directions registered confusion, impatience. As he looked down, fingers appeared close to his foot, within inches, four of them that Joe would know anywhere curled around the bars of the below-decks metal cage. They gripped, white-knuckled. The arm and the body attached were moving, the pace and emphasis unmistakable.

For the first time of the whole tour, Joe sat down during his oration and parked his denim-clad arse on the stage. On the grate. He'd been near the end of his spiel. Beyond distracted but audience not forgotten, he made up whatever bullshit he had to. Impossible to be stealthy under so many watchful eyes, he stared back out into the endless mob of perms and leopardskin, brightly-coloured make-up and black tee-shirts as he reached over to stroke the tiny creases of the four fingers' joints. 

From almost directly under his bum there emanated a cry. Both hoarse and piercing, it could have been one of outrage, could have been that of a man whose body had just betrayed him, could have been the expression of someone who for once got a semblance of what he wanted. Whichever, Joe knew that voice after so much time already spent fighting its siren song. 

He wouldn't be able to stand on his feet again till the three below swaggered back up on stage. Five minutes later, they appeared up the tiny, narrow stairway one by one, into the light, post-orgasmic. Steve's ever-present smoke dangled between his lips and Sav could barely keep his knees from buckling. Phil cut Joe a look that was as sharp as his face, which Joe took to mean he was so disturbed they'd be looking for a new guitarist again soon.

He'd misinterpreted that message. Indeed, why would Phil care if Sav let some girlie-looking bloke in a skirt bend over for him, considering how many nights he and Steve had shared under no such false pretenses? Later, Phil told Joe that he'd known at that moment from the looks on their faces who would be pairing up with whom next - finally! - slow-witted Northerners that the two founding members in question were.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Warning for anyone super-sensitive to dub-con type situations, there might be a little if you get out a microscope.

It still took them hours. The post-show partying could not be forgone unless one was a hospital case; it was expected. Joe kept one eye glued to his prey and avoided darkened corners. 

It wasn't like he and Sav hadn't been in the same room together thousands of times, alone or with any number of others. Till now, he'd carried his locked-down desire but no intent. It made him shaky, watching his bandmate prowling the room. Sav rarely made any sort of scene and he was being particularly elusive: That night he melted into the Serengeti of bigwigs, friends, groupies and crew. 

When at last the milieu thinned, Joe approached from the side. Unerringly, Sav sensed him from six feet away. It was all over him, from the stiffened posture to the sudden flash of jaw muscle. 

They still needed couple of hits and more shots to work up the nerve. Two shows booked back to back in the same stadium meant no load-out that night. Escaping into the arena, they gravitated toward their center stage. No one had stopped them; no one would disturb them except, possibly, the cleaning staff if they didn't finish by morning.

By 3:30 am, far, far under the stage, two panting bodies were hard at it, fighting for control in open-mouthed kisses. Every motion was an urgent lurch of grab-grip-regrip, side-step, rough caresses. They stumbled around, lost in snogging and feeling each other's frames and overlays. Three studded belts fell on the floor, haphazard squiggled Rorschachs of lust in progress. A bright-yellow piece of history lay shredded near them, one rip too many ending its life. Lost in a good cause, as far as Sav was concerned. 

"Let's do it right here," Joe growled, also shirtless, his ragged jeans undone. "I never get to go down here." It had been on his mind - too much lost time and what he'd been missing. 

Removing his tongue from Joe's ear canal, Sav retorted, "You can go down right now." 

"Not that, not now. I wanna get so far up in you, I lift you off the ground." Rutting Sav's hip, Joe just went on and on as he spent more attention exploring skin, hair, erect nipples and a touchy area in the small of Sav's sweat-damp back. "Want your legs wrapped around me, want you to look me in the eye while we do it. Not like these birds who just bend over for it." 

"Easier that way," Sav gasped. He tossed his head back, baring his throat as Joe's teeth scraped against his neck. 

"And easier is better?" murmured Joe against traces of stubble and scent.

"No, just easier. Not missing much. Different nights, different birds; same old, same old." 

Joe reached down between them to palm Sav's erection, which was burning a line in his unbuttoned black jeans to the left of his fly. "Phil said it wasn't a girl tonight, for you." 

"Couldn't even tell until it was in, then I reached around and..." Two roughened moans cut off Sav's attempt to defend his actions. Encased blood surged under Joe's hand. By now feeling the chemical effects enough to not care if he got told off, Sav bent down to attach his mouth to one of Joe's nipples, and Joe was just buzzed enough not to stop him from sucking on his tits like he was a woman. 

"Did you make him cum?" hissed the singer. One of his knees nudged between Sav's. Another whirl-around for dominance and the air, the feel of the space, changed. They both looked up through the grate. The lasers, spots, gels and lighted overhead backdrop were out, it was all shadow. But not pitch-black like underneath the solid floor.

"Fucking right. If we were under that grate, you'd stick to the floor." Sav groaned and threw his hair back again, pushing against Joe's palm, insistent. He whispered, "Take it out for me, Joe. Go on, I fucking dare you. Let's see what you're made of." 

"No, you do it." It was the last fingerhold on Joe's restraint. He wanted to see, to feel so bad it was like every ounce of fluid in his body had dammed up in his pants. Their tongues met and twined again between two shades of pink lips, thinner and fuller. 

"So you're all talk," Sav scoffed to hide his disappointment as they broke for air. "I shoulda known." 

"Do you usually fuck blokes?" Joe blurted, blunt out of embarrassment that he didn't already have the answer one way or the other - he should know, shouldn't he? - and to shock the truth out of his mate. "Or was it your first time?" Whatever the reality, it wouldn't affect what he was fully aware was about to happen. 

Sav's fingers traced his shoulders and back, down his scapulae and down his spine. The reply tickled his chest; they pressed closer as two hands pulled at him, lower yet. "No, I don't. And no, it wasn't. Once was enough, till now."

Joe heard the edge in Sav voice. His hackles rose, that someone had touched this person in a manner Sav hadn't agreed to. Finally he understood the implications: that Sav had been begging him to lay hands on him in the most intimate of ways and he'd hesitated! Why? Suddenly it was his mission in life to erase those memories of whoever had... "When? Who? I'll kick their arse if--" 

"You don't remember." The point Sav was making with his little cutting-off noise was that Joe had been involved. Somehow. 

Incredulous, Joe sputtered, "No. No fucking way." Yet he pulled the bassist closer and wiggled his free hand between them, finally easing his zipper down and freeing him. Oh god. Sav's dick. Hot and hard inside the imperfect circle made of his hand, drooling slick, twitching at his touch. Strange shocky tremors like the first time he'd ever been aroused, long before he could do anything about it, shook Joe's body. His hand tightened around still-swelling flesh. 

Sav shimmied his jeans down a little more. "I believe you owe me." 

"But... when? How could I not have have known?" Filtering memories, flashes going by like a slide show carousel whirling at breakneck speed, Joe looked inward and came up empty. Unconsciously he stroked the cylinder of flesh filling his grip. 

"We shared a woman, it was Denver." Their faces remained so close that when Sav spoke, Joe felt a tiny sliver of semi-detached skin from a chapped area of his lower lip scratch against the side of his mouth. 

He still couldn't accept what he'd done. "Surely I'd have remembered... how pissed was I?" 

Sav shook his head, one quick jerk in either direction. "No, listen. We had her between us, remember? You in front, me in back. She left while you were in the loo, maybe it was too much for her. When you returned to the room..." Sav's irises, two slightly different azures had they been in daylight, the blown pupils widening another fraction, jumped side to side, "I thought we were just gonna crash, entertainment committee departed and all. You crawled into bed with me and... you were going to have your turn, you said." Joe made a noise of protest and Sav spoke over him, "I didn't stop you." 

It wasn't annoyance nor regret, although it sounded a little like it. Joe's heart dive-bombed in his chest, plummeting through the floor. "Why the fuck not?" 

Sav sighed. He spoke in a whisper near Joe's ear, the hot breath against hidden nerves making the frontman tremble. "Because I was getting what I'd wanted for so goddamned long. I saw how you took care of Rick when he lost his arm. How you made Phil welcome, how you... help Steve every night when his stagefright defeats the rest of us. Wanted it - you - for myself but I've done nothing to deserve--" 

"Hush! Any decent person would do those things." Somewhere in the back of his mind, Joe was shaking his head bemusedly over the weirdest foreplay ever. At least he could breathe again. Through confession after confession, he remained close enough to scan Sav's retinas. With Sav's hand in his pants, words came at a premium.

"You hush, Joe! No one else can or did... Oh god!" 

Joe had let go of his erection and had him by the balls now, getting a feel for the heaviness and denseness. Each of them reached up to grab onto a bar of the grate with their off hand. "You never needed me for anything. If you had, I'd have done for you. Anything. Are you saying... you need me now?" He tipped his head forward to breathe warmth onto Sav's shoulder and onto his neck where the jugular pulsed to match expanded vessels below. 

Sav's rib cage rose and fell faster. He panted, "Just like this, touching me. Making me naked. And what you're gonna do with this here." His hand moved faster. "Do you want me like that, too?" 

The question made Joe's whole body shudder. But he was so hopped up on sex hormones - he needed, too - that he circumvented rather than outright deny he'd ever go there and thus, admit his fear. "Fuck, Savage! Leave it to you..." 

"Yes, you should...!" 

"Kick those trousers off and let me in, mate, luv. Can we do it like that? For tonight...?" 

"Yeah, Joe..." The black jeans disappeared into mirky depths and Joe's frayed denim slid down his long, hairy thighs to his knees, useful in bracing his stance. Those frayed threads strained.

Suddenly, unexpected, Sav's legs came up around him. "We doin' it standing?" Joe asked, trying to find a new center of balance. "You're not exactly one of those dainty, delicate types." 

"Are you saying I'm fat?!"

"No! I'm sayin'... you're a bloke. Muscle and bone, as it should be."

Rather than go for the bait of Joe's double entendre, Sav continued, "You're so tough, so strong, such a leader. Prove it." The semi-sarcastic challenge only drove Joe to do exactly that. The thighs surrounding his hips squeezed tighter as Sav hitched himself up a little more. His pre-come left smears and flung tiny drops onto Joe's abdomen. "Do it to me now." He groaned, like surrender. "Give me what I need." 

"Yeah, Sav. Let me. Means so much." Joe could do in the way he was being asked, with his body and his sex - and everything that was him, whatever quality Sav saw under the surface in him that he'd somehow felt had been withheld for so long. They were already friends, more than that. It was a matter of - as Sav said - proving it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *You knew what was gonna happen. It was only a matter of how.  
> *I'm not THE person on IG who calls him/herself a whore for Sav's ['70s-'80s] teeth but...   
> *Sav was asked in an interview whatever happened to the iconic ripped yellow shirt from the Hysteria tour. He couldn't recall exactly when it met its end but it was 'one rip too many'.

He tried the physical aspect unsuccessfully at first. True, he was nearly as wet as Sav by now with pre-come, but it wasn't enough. 

"Spit in your hand," Sav whispered against the side of his neck. "I can, too, if we need more. Rub it on your cock and on my--" 

"Yes, yes, I get the idea..." Touching himself in the presence of another bloke, even in the near-dark, was bad enough. Then Sav's... he still couldn't go there in concrete words but fingers, no problem, which just made him harder than before. "Ready now?" Hearing no protests, Joe pushed till he could feel something give, opening, then in, inside. Heat surrounded him. The intake of breath, the little whine, repeated swallows - he licked Sav's neck and under his jaw till the tension eased, but he tasted saltwater and held still. 

Twilight shadows shifted. In Joe's viewfinder, wide eyes squinched shut tight, upper lip raised in a snarl, a pointed canine shown on one side and that snaggle on the other. The close-packed lower row caught some stray pinpoint beam and in that moment, Sav looked half-animal, like he could eat Joe alive with teeth and claws. From underneath, Joe rooted around, trying to compensate for the lack of anything to lean against or lie upon. Sav's thighs hitched again and a heel dug into his sacrum.

He had been held too tightly to draw back. When the pressure eased just enough, Joe pushed upward again instead. The motion felt so awkward, jabbing blindly. There below the grate, it had been as much touch as their adjusted vision, this coming together. Sav curved his back, not an arch but the opposite, to meet him. There! The angle, sorted. Now all Joe needed was speed and rhythm. 

He could hump, he could let himself be ridden. He could fuck with a vengeance that only increased year after post-teenage year. Joe knew this man, couldn't cheat him of his best, something only confirmed by Sav admitting he needed him, too. Already he was sweating like a pig from effort, just as he did - they all did - upon the stage. His free arm wound around Sav's back for support, but what he needed was both hands free to roam at will, grip and squeeze. 

"Reach both your hands up," hissed Joe, rolling his hips in a way he'd never do in front of an audience, which made Sav suck in a ragged breath. "Grab the bars." 

"But then I can't touch you," Sav protested in a whisper. Still, he did it, the urge to be worked over till the evidence of his love and lust got fucked out of him, all over Joe, more imperative than to take any sort of control.

Joe's hand slid down to Sav's buttcheek. He dug his fingers into the meat and tilted his pelvis a new way, impaling Sav further. "This ain't gonna be pretty. Let me do all the work this time. You can make it up to me." 

"Fucking right I will." Every push and writhe all rested on Joe, but Sav held most of his weight up with his arms and rode with the side of fierceness inside him just occasionally captured on film, rarely revealed but in raised middle fingers and that wide-eyed wildness Joe brought out when he'd taken him. 

Panting with effort, Joe searched with his mouth to kiss each bicep, dragging his tongue crossways to the tightened fibres. "You're so... this is..." he hiccupped, unable to accurately vocalize the physical emotion flooding his being. "I wanted you. Have. For so long." He thrust deep and long, pulling Sav onto him with all his strength. 

"Me too... but I never thought," Sav's head tipped back, and Joe ducked down a little to bury his face in the cords of the exposed long neck, "that it would ever happen again unless you were too gone to--" 

"To remember?" Again, Joe strove with his entire being. He couldn't last much longer, the physical fortitude it took to maintain the position and action or the sexual restraint he found was far less than perfected in this man's presence, was going to collapse. 

"Yeah." Sav was starting to tremble, the reason also two-fold. 

"This is all I want to remember. Not the waiting, not watching you through the floor... though it was sexy."

"Joe," rasped Sav, "just finish it, finish me off."

The words set free the flood. Unable to cry out and have it echo across the empty arena, Joe hissed, "I'm coming! Please, Sav, wanna feel your..." Streaks of silky-wet heat painted his belly and chest. Together, they rode it out till Sav's grip on the grates faltered, Joe's knees gave out and they ended in a heap, smeared in the fluids of their satiation.

It was enough, but it wasn't. One face tilted up, one tilted down, seeking lips and tongues spoke silently against and between. 

Reality filtered in. In the echoing distance, they could hear the brisk brush of brooms. After a minute, Sav began the process from joined to disjointed. His hand encountered his former shirt and he mopped them mostly clean. 

Joe let him. His head was still spinning and mind reeling from the workout, the sexual release, the information, the transition, everything. He thought about the salt on his tongue, weighed it against the overwhelmingly favourable response in general. "Did I hurt you?" 

"Joe." Although he would never actually say it aloud, Sav more or less affirmed things - things now in the past.

"I'm so sorry." 

"Don't be. I knew what to expect."

"I suppose it wasn't going to be perfect. No matter how much we wanted it to be." 

"Right, you said as much. Imperfect perfection. We got there. We're both good now, yeah?" Sav lowered his head and nuzzled the side of his mate's face. Joe turned his head, surrounded by the curly net hanging down to frame them. Searching out each other's lips, two near-naked men on the cement floor comforted each other past the aftereffects of the rough transaction. 

"Mm-hm. We should get to the bus." The words were said to provide them both an out, from their present environs and from what they had just done if either needed the latter. 

"Hotel tonight, Joe." Sav paused, pulling away. He searched for clothes, feeling around the chilly floor in the dimness. "Almost morning now. Stay in my room." Since this tour had become profitable, they had stopped sharing rooms, which they always had done since their first time on the road in America. 

"And in the morning...?"

"If we can still manage look at each other, then I see no reason why not." 

"And after? What about... under the stage?" 

"These are things I can't answer for you, alone," Sav pointed out. Clothing rustled. It sounded like jeans being pulled on. He was right - he heard the punctuation of a zipper being pulled up. Joe was slower. He wished they could continue, there and then. People were walking about, though. Not close by, but they could hear footsteps going to and fro, up and down stairs, clearing the nosebleeds of debris. 

Two bleach-shaded heads appeared from under cover of the machina of their livelihood. Keeping a calculated distance, they crept out, hunched from ducking under the stage fence. Then straightened, the two walked as casually toward the exit sign that led to backstage as their recent positions allowed. They passed only a janitor or two who ignored them, and a couple of security staff, who nodded. No one gave them a second glance for being half-dressed, sweaty and disheveled. If they did, those looks were bemused. 'Rock stars.' 

As they passed a trash can, empty but for a new bin liner, Sav dropped the yellow rag into it. 

Fin.


End file.
